


Tobias: The Last Airbender

by CassieWasRight



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassieWasRight/pseuds/CassieWasRight
Summary: A massive empire with advanced technology is poised to take over the world. Five idiot teens with a death wish must dodge a banished prince and somehow manage to take down the Fire Lord with only their wits and a little bit of bending.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Tobias: The Last Airbender

“Watch this,” said one boy to the other, and pulled back the fishing spear in preparation to strike.

She had captured the fish in a perfect globe of water and was concentrating so much on maneuvering it back over the canoe that she didn’t hear until it was too late.

The butt of the spear pierced the globe, and the fish broke free and plunged into the water with a splash.

“Marco!” she yelled, pivoting to face him. “Watch where you’re pointing your spear! I’d just caught that fish.” The boat shook slightly under her feet.

The boy holding the spear turned around a guilty expression on his face.

The other boy, sitting back toward the stern of the boat, looked up at his cousin. “You’re fishing with waterbending now?”

“Well, I would be, if there weren’t two idiots goofing off and getting in my way.” She rolled her eyes and sat down, facing the prow of the boat away from the two of them.

They all noticed at approximately the same moment.

The waters around the Southern Water Tribe village had patches of clear ocean and patches of treacherously icy water. Somehow, in the past few minutes, they’d been pushed off course - possibly by some unintentional waterbending, possibly by a stray current - and now they were headed straight for an icy patch at a considerable speed.

“Uh, Jake?” said Marco, grabbing an oar.

“Yeah, on it,” said the other boy, grabbing the other oar.

For a second, Jake considered simply plunging his oar of the port side of the craft, and hope that by turning the canoe they would get back on course. But at the speed they were going, that would just turn the canoe so that the long side smashed against the ice, rather than allowing them to maneuver the narrow prow through the patches of ice.

“On oar on each side. We need to slow down,” he said.   
Marco nodded and plunged the oar into the water. The additional drag helped, but they were still headed straight for a small iceberg.

“Uh, Rachel, can you bend us some extra water on the starboard side?”

Frowning, his cousin put her arms in a water bending stance and pulled at the water. The boat lurched uncomfortably, but they managed to narrowly miss the iceberg.

Well, the first one.

From that point on, there was no time for Jake to make commands. Each of the three of them acted on instinct, narrowly missing some icy patches, wincing as the canoe scraped others.

Then Rachel saw it, looming ahead. A massive iceberg, shrouded in mist, surrounded by some islands of ice, each larger than their boat. She instinctively pulled at the water, trying to buoy the boat up and over, but it was too much and the water didn’t even rise.

“Jump!” Jake’s voice, behind her. So she did.

There was a terrible crunching noise, and they were stranded on a few large ice-floes, a good twenty-minute canoe ride from the village.

For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then, Jake’s voice again. “Rachel, Marco, are you okay?”

“Doing great! Positively dandy. I mean, other than being stuck on a chunk of ice halfway out to sea with no way to get home.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. All in one piece.”

“That’s good - “

“I mean, what is even the point of your water magic if it can’t even save us when we’re SURROUNDED BY WATER?” Marco may have sounded just the teensiest bit hysterical.

“Well, at least my ‘water magic’ did something! I didn’t see you and your boomerang keeping us from drifting off course. Maybe you were too busy making me lose our dinner to pay attention to navigating, which was YOUR JOB!”

“Uh, guys?”

“My job? You’re the one sitting at the prow of the boat! How did you miss that we were heading straight for an ice field?”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault!?”

“Guys!”

“I’m sick and tired of you acting like a know-it-all - “

“GUYS!”

“WHAT!?” demanded Rachel and Marco simultaneously.

Their question was punctuated by a loud crack behind Rachel.

See, as they argued, Rachel had been gesticulating with her hands, and without realizing, had waterbent the ice of the giant iceberg. Now the iceberg was crumbling into an avalanche behind them.

“Duck!” screamed Jake.

Huge chunks of ice and snow plunged into the water, creating a thick mist and a large wave that rocked the ice floes each of the three stood on. After several seconds of chaos, for the second time in the past five minutes, an eerie silence descended.

As the mist cleared, Jake could see Marco ahead of him, clinging to his boomerang, which he had stuck in the ice to keep himself from being swept away. Jake had done something similar with his club. The ice floe Rachel was on was still shrouded in mist.

“Rachel!”

“I’m fine!”

Jake slowly climbed to his feet. One of the canoe’s oars floated a few feet away, so he knelt and fished for it with his club, eventually managing to grab it. He experimented with paddling the ice floe closer to the others, but it didn’t seem to move much.

The mist finally cleared to the point where he could see Rachel. She had somehow managed to bend enough ice over her arms to stay on the floe, but she was struggling to free herself now.

Marco, whose ice floe was separated from hers by a few feet of water, was eyeing that gap with a calculating expression on his face. Jake plotted himself a path of ice floes that he thought he could jump to the main iceberg, which had a flat-ish area at the base that looked a bit more stable than where they currently were.

After a dizzying set of jumps where he almost fell in three times, Jake landed on the main iceberg and found himself face to face with a strange figure.

It was deep inside the clear blue ice of the iceberg. It looked like a humanoid figure, but with a bright glowing arrow across its forehead and eyes that glowed white. It was simultaneously terrifying and beautiful.

“I got it,” said Rachel’s voice behind him. Marco had succeeded in freeing one of her hands from the ice, and she promptly used it to liquify the rest of the ice and stand up.

They both turned to the iceberg, where Jake was staring at a shadowy shape just visible through the ice. “Is that a kid?” asked Rachel, squinting.

Marco shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt anything could survive inside an iceberg. It’s probably a shipwreck victim or something.”

Rachel turned around and concentrated on bending them toward the iceberg. It took a few tries, and it wasn’t very quick or precise, but they slowly were drifting forward.

“What are you doing?” Jake had just grabbed his club in two hands. As Marco watched, he took a swing and slammed the club into the iceberg, leaving a dent.

“Shut up Marco, I’m bending,” said Rachel.

“Wasn’t talking to you.”

Jake swung again, and the club hit the ice with a high dull  _ clink _ .

“Jake, I’m not sure you should be -”

Jake hit the ice again, but this time the ice exploded outward, and a brilliant blue light made Marco see nothing but red splotches for several seconds.

When his vision started to clear, he blinked through the tears and watched a shadowy figure emerge from the top of what appeared to be a broken, unnaturally smooth globe of ice. Where the figure should have ice, instead there was the same blue glow. As Marco watched, the glow faded, and for a second he saw clear hazel irises before the figure’s eyes closed and it swayed.

Jake darted forward to catch the figure, which seemed to fall slowly, as though buoyed by some invisible force, before collapsing onto Jake.

Their ice floe was now a couple of feet from the iceberg, so Rachel dashed past Marco, jumped across, and helped Jake lower the figure to the ground.

“He’s still breathing,” said Jake. “I think we need to get him someplace warm.”

The figure appeared to be a boy about their age, with a shaved head and blue arrow-shaped tattoos running up his forehead. He was dressed in a strange yellow and orange tunic with voluminous pants. It was definitely not clothing meant for the Southern Water Tribe’s freezing weather.

Seeing Jake behave so tenderly, like the boy was made of glass, irritated Marco. If he was right about the boy - 

The floe nudged against the iceberg, and Marco approached the three of them. Rachel was leaning over the boy’s head when the boy’s eyes flickered open, and Marco saw what he’d thought he imagined.

Marco’s boomerang was at the kid’s throat.

“Marco!” Rachel was glaring at him.

“He’s Fire Nation. Look at his eyes.” Marco was. The boy stared back, silently.

“No he’s not,” said Jake.

Marco glanced at him. “What?”

“Those are airbender tattoos. GranGran told me about them once. Airbenders used to get tattoos when they became masters.”

Marco pursed his lips but didn’t drop the boomerang.

“Marco, take a step back. Even if this kid is a firebender, there’s three of us and we’re surrounded by icy cold water.” Rachel gestured with the hand she wasn’t using to support the boy’s back.

Marco looked at Rachel, then at the boy, who looked significantly less nervous that anyone whose life was being threatened ought to. Finally, he took a step back, but he kept his boomerang in his hand.

“Hey,” said Rachel, in a gentle voice that Marco wasn’t used to hearing from her.

The boy opened his mouth, but his words came out in a croak. He closed his eyes, swallowed, then tried again. “Where am I?”

“The Southern Water Tribe,” said Rachel. “I’m Rachel, that’s Jake, and the idiot with the boomerang over there is Marco.”

The boy nodded and moved to sit up. Rachel and Jake backed up to let him, and he leaned back against the side of the iceberg, seemingly oblivious to the cold.

“I’m Tobias,” he said. “And I’m guessing based on your friend’s reaction that you’re no friend of the Fire Nation.” He paused.

Jake and Rachel waited, silently. Marco watched the three of them. Rachel’s face was blank. A slow smile was growing on Jake’s face.

“I’m the Avatar,” said the boy from the iceberg, finally. “And I think I need to defeat the Fire Lord and save the world.”


End file.
